Should You Educate Fish on Your Own Dime

Look, we love poker. We love teaching people how to do better in poker, and we definitely like explaining our side of poker to people. However, the reality is that poker is a competition. You can’t hope to compete against people and think that everything is going to be just fine. You’re going to need to make sure that you keep your guard up. Sure, there’s going to be some bad players out there, and you don’t want to feed their ego top much by thinking that they’re great legends already. On the other hand, do you really need to educate fish players?

We have all seen fish — calling stations gone wild, playing every single hand, hoping that they’re going to get lucky. Yes, it’s true that sometimes they do get lucky. But they have a tendency to have losing percentages over time, which is the last thing that we really want to see happen. What you’re going to have to do is make sure that you really do get things under control as much as possible. You just need to make sure that you’re trying to get the best outcome possible for your life. That’s really the only way that you’re going to get anything off the ground. You have to ensure that you really figure out what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, and what point do you really want to start from. That’s poker in a nutshell.

But let’s talk more about the fish. No, you shouldn’t try to educate poker players on your own dime. If you’re playing against them in a tournament, you don’t want to make comments like that. You want to focus on the game itself. It’s better this way for all parties involved. If you try to educate and play teacher, you might have your hard earned results laughed at anyway. You want to really ensure that you’re thinking about how to be a better player. You ultimately want to become a shark. And if that’s the type of poker player you want to be, fish are just there to be eaten. Don’t tell them that they’re fish. Don’t try to get them to play better. Take advantage of them and keep going.

If the tables were turned, they would be taking advantage of you. Maybe that’s brutal to say, but poker is a strategy game. Whoever wins, wins. Whoever loses, doesn’t. It’s really that simple. Why not keep practicing and see what you can do to beat the fish? Good luck!